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Hybrid View

no place to go

No place to go means that this place is perfect as it is. This place being perfect as it is doesn't mean that we should linger here forever. This place is the meeting and merging of the self and everything, the self changes, everything changes, and so movement takes place. This place is no specific location in space and time, it surely cannot be measured and has no bounds. At the same time, we may call it room, countryside, city, country. No place to go means perfection cannot be found through searches and journeys. The sole purpose of journeys is to exhaust the very illusion that anything worth it will come out of them. You are always back where you started. This place.

Everyone bound by karma,
speaking of a Buddha-mind "within".

Tied up by this
I couldn’t find it.

Finally tracked it down,
showing itself as me.

These are the living words of Tettsu Gikai ( student of Koun Ejo and Dogen) , uttered now and then. Dropping "within" and "without" requires to drop self and others, practice and family life, dropping differences, boundaries and ideas.

Please don't make anything too holy. It is so easy to over do it. Don't reject any dusty corner. Live like a circle, broad and bright, unmoving yet touching everything. The "you" sitting and the "you" driving, working, eating... are not two.

In a spring outside time, flowers bloom on a withered tree;
you ride a jade elephant backwards, chasing the winged dragon-deer;
now as you hide far beyond innumerable peaks--
the white moon, a cool breeze, the dawn of a fortunate day